


bad ideas

by fairyhill



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: First Kiss, Happy Ending, M/M, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Season/Series 01, probably ooc but who cares!!!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-02
Updated: 2020-09-02
Packaged: 2021-03-06 20:07:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,359
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26254645
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairyhill/pseuds/fairyhill
Summary: Maybe Jon is a metaphor for God right now, or maybe he is a metaphor for nothing and Martin is just buzzed as a secular Christmas Party drags along upstairs.Jon circles Martin's wrist with his slender fingers, leans close, says: "Can I—"This is a bad idea.Martin says: "Yes."or: it's ill-advised to make out with your boss with whom you are hoplessly in love while you're supposed to be at a christmas party, but that never stopped martin "king" blackwood
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan "Jon" Sims | The Archivist
Comments: 26
Kudos: 177





	bad ideas

The Annual Institute Holiday party is a minefield of old alliances and older grudges all dressed up in an elf costume (despite Elias insisting that this is _not_ a Christmas party, really, I mean it only as a _holiday_ party, completely secular) and it reminds Martin of when he was a kid and they had Christmas parties at school; cliquey things, with cupcakes bought in packages of six, and grape punch staining their little-kid mouths. The room is filled with the steady noise that comes of lots of people talking all at once, and Martin is a little buzzed by this point because Tim keeps pushing cold drinks into his hands, sequestered away into their own little corner as they are.

"—and that's when I told him that if he wanted another clown, he could hire one himself," Tim finishes with a grand flourish, and Martin realizes that he's been tuned out of the conversation. Tim is looking at him expectantly, so he wipes his sweating palms on his pants and says: "Yeah, hate it when that happens."

Tim looks unimpressed. Sasha shoots him a grin in her knowing way as he leans forward to flick Martin's forehead, saying, "Where'd you go, Marto?" and he's only half joking.

He remembers sitting in church with his mum when she still went to church, organ music filling the ramshackle old building, air heavy with the weight of holy places everywhere.

"I need to use the restroom," he announces, standing up.

"We'll be here when you get back," Sasha says, cutting off whatever Tim was about to say, and Martin is grateful.

He doesn't end up going to the restroom; his wandering feet lead him into the archive breakroom, and he sees each of their four mugs overturned in the dishrack, a plain black one for Jon, kittens saying something mildly sarcastic for Tim and Sasha, sky blue and patterned with stars for Martin. Martin bought each of them with careful consideration. And really, this is what he is, isn't it? Tim seduces cops and Sasha does things that are staggeringly illegal on her computer, and Jon is tetchy and wry, and Martin worries about all of them.

He doesn't really want to make tea right now. He continues walking through the archives (the thing about holiness is that it slips through the cracks, it makes itself a home in places no one would expect it to be) which are darkened and silent around him. He passes their desks, all three of them laden with paper and binders and, inexplicably, several half-melted gonk trolls forming a loose semicircle around Tim's monitor. There is organ music echoing in the dusty chambers of his heart.

Jon's lights are on, seeping through the cracks around the closed door of his office.

Martin feels amusement and concern in equal measure, and weighs the pros and cons of checking in on a Jon who is most likely in a bad mood, or very tired, or both. He has noted that, when tired, Jon becomes crankier than usual, something oddly childish in the habit.

The door swings open beneath his palms, unlocked, and Jon is sitting there, furiously scribbling with a red pen on a paper already heavily annotated in blue ink.

"Jon?" Martin asks, and Jon jumps, pen slipping, leaving a red line. Proof of existence and all that.

"Martin," Jon says, and his voice is hoarse from disuse; he clears his throat, tries again. "I thought you were at the Holiday Party."

"I was," Martin says, shrugging one shoulder. If this were a daytime interaction, if he wasn't in such a weird mood, he would be a stuttering, stumbling mess. "I thought you would be, too, but I didn't see you. Guess this is why." A pause. "Can I . . . come in?"

Jon scratches his nose absentmindedly with his pen, leaving behind a red smudge. "Sure," he says, and Martin lets the door shut behind him. He doesn't sit in one of the (deliberately) uncomfortable chairs facing Jon's desk, contents himself with hovering next to one, oddly supplicant. Jon is a pensive god, a thoughtful god, Martin repentant at his glorious altar.

"Do you believe in God?" Martin asks, because he is slightly buzzed and it's a secular Christmas party and he is feeling nostalgic.

Jon blinks owlishly up at him, and says, "Yes."

Martin waits. Jon scratches something out on his paper, writes something new in its place in his illegible scrawl. There are no tape recorders in sight.

"My grandmother was muslim," he says. "I was not. My grandmother died. I became muslim. Correlation, not causation."

God takes various forms; the swollen creek behind Martin's mother's home after rain, the toiletries section of a convenience store at night, the strange, straggly man sitting in front of him. The shape of God is never really the point. The point is the games that could be played by the river, the human motions of buying toothpaste, the staggering love he feels for Jonathan Sims. The point of God is possibility. The point of God is circular. But that's all been said before.

"And you?" Jon asks after another pause, one in which he somehow manages to stay upright and breathing, "Do you believe in God?"

Martin says, "Yes."

Jon waits. Martin scratches at his wrist, pulls at his earlobe. There are no tape recorders in sight.

"Technically, I'm a lapsed Catholic, but I still believe in God. I just think He's not as keen on benevolence and mercy as everyone thinks."

Jon barks out a laugh, a strange, boyish thing that instantly transforms his face into something youthful and buoyant, and something (not his heart) twists in Martin's chest with the sound of it, the utter carelessness of it.

"I'll second you on that," Jon says, and sticks the cap of his pen firmly into his mouth. After a few moments he says, "A light so bright is blinds, right? _Allahu noorus samawate wal ard_."

This time is stolen, oddly dissonant; when they next come into work, Jon will be his usual waspish self, and Martin will be his usual clumsy self, both of them free to orbit around the sun that is the Magnus Institute in their own separate ways.

"I didn't know you were muslim," Martin says.

"I didn't know you were lapsed Catholic," Jon shoots back, and then they're both laughing, and it's clumsy (not in the way that Martin is clumsy, because Martin's clumsiness never ever manages to come off as bumbling or endearing) and it's nice, and Martin is sure that they have made something momentarily holy here, in Jon's cramped little little office.

And then the laughter is gone and they are left to their silence. Jon seems to forget that Martin is still there, because he goes back to scribbling furiously on his paper, which is now more pen than paper and printer ink. Martin is a little bit in love with Jon's hands; they're kind of knobbly, kind of boyish, moving like little machines with their precise movement. As Martin watches, Jon reaches up, presses a knuckle to his eye, a familiar motion. As Martin watches, still standing, Jon gets up and crosses the office, extricates something from his cramped little shelf and jumps as he turns to see that Martin is still there, still present. Martin isn't entirely sure he's present in his own life sometimes, a spectre moving through the motions of a human life, but here, pinned by Jon's searching gaze, he feels truly _seen_ in a way that is neither unpleasant nor pleasing.

"Why are you here, Martin?" Jon asks, each word careful in his mouth. _Why are you here, Martin? Why are you here?_

Martin shrugs one shoulder and says, "I didn't want to be at the party."

Jon moves closer, unexpectedly, and Martin feels like this is some sort of confession even though he's allowed to be here, technically. Like Jon is obscured by a screen and Martin is telling him all the awful things he's done.

"No," Jon says, "I mean why are you _here_?"

It pulls itself out of Martin. "Because I wanted to see you."

Jon is much closer now than he'd been before, and he's never done this before, never looked at Martin with that calculating gaze; usually, Martin is an object of disdain, something dismissive. Curled lip, twitch of hand, _Go find me that statement, I'm busy right now._ He's painfully aware of his every breath, of the knowledge that if he were to move even one step closer, Jon would have him cornered against the desk.

Martin has had some time to get used to the face that he is in love with Jonathan Sims. It's not a comfortable reality, not one Martin enjoys living sometimes, but he has had time. Maybe Jon is a metaphor for God right now, or maybe Jon is a metaphor for nothing and Martin is just buzzed as a secular Christmas Party drags along upstairs.

"Why?" Jon asks, and Martin can't think clearly with his proximity. The air is heavy with the weight of holy places. Organ music. Et cetera.

"I don't— I don't _know_ ," he says, and Jon is too close and too far and Martin is no longer a ghost and maybe that's not such a good thing after all.

"You don't know," Jon repeats, and he takes that one step closer. Martin can't breathe.

This is a bad idea.

Jon circles Martin's wrist with his slender fingers, leans close, says: "Can I—"

This is a _bad_ idea.

Martin says: " _Yes_."

_This is a bad idea._

Jon kisses him.

It's clumsy (not in the way that Martin is clumsy, because Martin's clumsiness never ever manages to come off as bumbling or endearing) and nice, and Jon's lips are surprisingly soft against his, and Jon is not a God anymore but is, in fact, a religion in his own right.

Jon pulls away and Martin is definitely blushing, and Jon looks a bit dazed himself as he says, slowly, "Sorry."

Seized by a sudden bout of recklessness (still surprised by his marvelous capacity for self-betrayal) Martin says, "Do it again."

Martin has imagined kissing Jon before, but in his imaginings it's always a thing of consideration, sweet and distinctly fairy-tale. Kissing Jon in real life is like jumping off a cliff, which is to say, exhilarating until you realize that there's no way to stop your fall.

Jon grins (like tearing the world in two) and obliges. And yet for all of that, for the muddle of Martin's feelings, for the static rush of electricity, for the flickering of the lights overhead, it's a very careful kiss, something that strikes Martin as being distinctly _Jon_.

Jon's hand is still circling Martin's wrist, so he lifts his hand and touches it to the column of Jon's throat, registers a rabbit pulse, has time to think, _bad idea_ , has time to think, _careful, careful_. Jon is pushing him back against the desk, hand still at his wrist, so Martin reaches out and puts a hand on Jon's back and pulls him closer and he _lets him_.

Dissonance: the wrongness of something, the single off-key note.

Jon raises a hand and puts it to Martin's jaw, tilting for a better angle and it feels — nice, this feels nice ( _bad idea, bad idea, bad idea_ ) because Jon is close and touchable and kissing him, Martin Blackwood the ghost, Martin Blackwood the clumsy one, the annoying one, the one who is a bystander in his own life.

The lights flicker overhead, the static rush of electricity. Holiness. Organs. Et cetera. This has all been said before.

Jon kisses him, and Martin feels _real_.

Eventually, they break apart. Eventually, Jon straightens his tie and coughs into his fist and says, _Sorry, I still have to_ — and Martin says _I should probably go back, Tim and Sasha_ — at the same time.

Eventually, Martin leaves.

* * *

Jon comes into work and he's himself again, which is to say godly and unreachable and cold, and Martin comes into work and is himself again, which is to say clumsy and ghostly and worrying. They don't talk about it. They don't talk.

It was a bad idea.

* * *

And then: Jane Prentiss, Sasha, Michael, Jurgen Leitner, the Circus (oh God, the Circus) and Tim and Jon are both dead (definitely and sort of, respectively) and Martin cries for both of them, sinks to the ground in front of Tim's grave, hunched and ghostly and _sobs_ into the cruel universe. Death of God and all that. But then God is no longer dead because Jon is walking through the hallowed halls of the Institute, eyes seeking Martin out and there's something different in them, something Martin, who is a hopeless romantic, instantly recognizes and then wishes he didn't because Peter Lukas is breathing down his neck. There is Elias Bouchard and Jonah Magnus and Daisy and Trevor Herbert and Julia Montauk and the horrible vacancy of the Lonely and _I see you, I really loved you, I thought you might be lost_ and then:

Jon is sleeping, or pretending to sleep, cheek pressed against the cool glass of a train rattling its way towards Scotland, towards something new. And he looks smudgy and soft in the daylight, their knees are fitted carefully together in the close quarters, and Martin is free to look all he wants, the Lonely still making his bones brittle but less so, now.

Jon opens his eyes, catches Martin in the act, smiles in a way that is tentative and hesitant, and Martin smiles carefully back. His face is unused to the motions of joy but he thinks: I will learn again. Jon moves so that he's sitting next to Martin, leans his head against his arm, closes his eyes again. His fingers find Martin's and he threads them together (Martin is a little bit in love with Jon's hands) (Martin is a little bit in love with Jon) and he is no longer a deity, and if he is, he is a softer one.

It isn't a bad idea.

**Author's Note:**

> should i be working on _dug out of the hillside_ or my personal project? yes. am i? none of your business.
> 
> follow me on [tumblr](https://fairy-hill.tumblr.com) because you have to always stay plugging. leave a comment if you liked 😳😳😳


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